A/N: TW for death and funeral. This is harsh so be warned.

Oritel let the back of his fingers brush Marion's just barely, afraid to admit he didn't know if she wanted him to touch her but he needed the answer all the same and there was no other way to ask for it. She was so quiet. Not because she had to be but because she didn't have anything to say. She felt so empty, both to him and to herself, and he had no idea how to help her. He didn't even know if she needed help or peace, to be left alone or to be held in his arms. He would do whatever she wanted of him as long as he knew what that was.

He'd been shocked at first, unsure of what to do, how to treat her. He knew she wasn't fragile and didn't want to be handled like she was even if she'd just lost both her parents. Then he'd learned he'd have to be the one to do something because she seemed to have just stopped. He'd watched her, seen her not cry. Not because she couldn't, but because there was nothing to cry over. She could have lost two stick figures bearing the names of her parents and it would have felt quite the same when there were no happy memories attached to their blank faces, no affection in the lines of their hands, no words of encouragement spoken from their closed mouths. She'd lost their predecessors on the thrones of Domino, nothing more.

He thought he'd feel something when his parents died even as distant and cold as they were. And Marion had probably thought the same, too. Yet, there was no reaction from her heart or her eyes when the people they were currently burying hadn't even raised her. They'd just left her to the maids and tutors until it was time to impose their rules on her and restrict her. And they were making her hate herself for not loving them even from beyond the grave.

He could hear her tearing her mind apart to find something, a memory stashed in the depths of her brain where she could barely reach it, to make her care about them when she had to, always the dutiful princess they'd forced her into even when she'd been the queen for years now and had the power to choose for herself. And he had to be the one to stitch the bleeding bits of flesh back together and nurse her back to health even when he had no idea how to do that and was terrified his sloppy attempt would only make it worse rather than help.

Marion pulled her hand away as if to make the chasm of his fear even bigger when it was already so enormous and the touch had barely been there but he'd still managed to irritate her with his inability to read her. She was taking his hand, though, and her warmth was startling when he'd been so harsh to himself and he had to be the one to support her, not the other way around. Yet, she held his hand over the shared grave of her parents looking straight ahead into it as if to tell them they could turn in it if they wanted before she'd let go. They'd never come to approve of their marriage but that hardly mattered to her when they'd made it so that she was only getting the love that she should have known in their arms from him. They'd never held her close to them like he had and they were paying the price now which he would have been perfectly fine with if they weren't making her pay it with them.

There were finally tears rolling down her cheeks and he knew she hated them, despised the way they would be perceived by everyone watching them, as if they were spilled for her parents when they were because of them. Her heart was bleeding from the way they'd torn it with their lives, not with their deaths, yet, it looked like she was mourning them instead of herself because they'd always taught her the impression she left in everyone was more important than the pain in her soul. And they kept hurting her even when they were supposed to be gone because the traces of how roughly they'd handled her wouldn't disappear so easily.

Oritel drew her into him, laying her head on his shoulder without caring how they appeared. People would talk anyway and would find reason to criticize. Others would sigh after their romance even when she was falling apart in his arms and he was holding her together because he was trying to save her in desperation and not because he loved her even when he did that with his whole heart. The media would go over the whole thing again and again when they didn't give a damn about the pain they might cause as they kept reminding her she wasn't mourning like she had to be, only about their viewership. Everyone else there hardly had the moral high ground so he couldn't be bothered to care about them when Marion's state was far more important.

And she didn't seem to care either as she pressed herself closer, letting her hair fall in her face and hide the agony everyone else would misunderstand and judge if they knew the truth. He didn't need to see it anyway when he knew what it was that shook her body hard enough to disintegrate them both but he didn't care about that. He would gladly die from her pain if he could be there for her and make it clear they were together. In everything. She could trust in his undying love for her.